You’ve read the interview (right?), some of you have even tried to throw money at the screen, and now the screen will actually accept your money if this is something you’d like to support. The Kickstarter page for Wasteland 2 is now live and is currently receiving about $1,000 per sentence I write, which means I should stop writing sentences and just paste in the link. The page has details of the incentives, quotes one of our readers, and also contains an informative and rather amusing video that explains why Fargo wants to make the game, and also recreates the difficulties he’s had convincing publishers that the world wants a Wasteland sequel. “There was a Fallout 1 and 2?”

I also think that 900k is a huge number. Sure Tim Schafer got 3m but he was the first one and I have a feeling that his games were more popular than Interplay’s rpgs, which are more a niche genre. But I have been wrong before.

Hm.. I guess these concerns have resolved themselves in the less-than-a-day since the original post. Wow, 500.000 pledged already. No need to fear the Kickstart-euphoria will die out before this is funded. (It is, by the way interesting to look at the profiles of backers – I’d say 80-90% of the profiles I had a look at – 20maybe – had only 2 projects they backed: Double Fine and this).

90 minutes in and $23,651 collected and counting. I actually wonder if they will ‘sell’ the $10k pledges. A million is a lot of money though, despite (or because of?) Fargo’s name on it. I hope they can manage it. :)

Actually Notch, Cliff Bleszinski of EPiC fame and another one being some guy that makes Sword and Sorcery Underworld: link to classicgamesremade.com , also apparently Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan (“And I’m sorry for playing on a pirated copy of Wasteland years ago, I hope this makes up for it.”) with one Unknown and one of the 5000$ spots is Mike Capps (Executive President at EPiC)

Obligatory “If you pledge more than $15 then you are mad” post that nobody will pay attention to, or may irritate people enough to pledge more than $15, and thus unsuspectingly support my nefarious scheme…

£30* for a big box with gubbins would have been above-average back in the ’90s golden age of PC gaming. Today, when your £30 (Amazon price for Mass Effect 3, roughly) gets you a DVD case with a disc in it and a little printed insert at most, it’s nothing short of stellar.

I think the main problem, or difference, is that “tactical shooter” is something even CoD likes to throw around as a phrase, while “old school adventure game” or “the sequel to game that started a string of high profile old school games” are almost niche products.

Basically, the rarer the idea is is compared to the current game industry ouput, the more likely it is to rake it in, especially if the projects aren’t even on the drawing board.

If you look at kickstarters from “non-famous” people, they generally show something up front before asking for money. It’s a weird trade from “faith” in what you can see, with “faith” in what the person has previously done and how it will stand apart from “normally funded” games .

It’s an interesting property of these crowdfunding projects, isn’t it? Publishers like to fund safe, bankable ideas, but individuals can group together to fund niche projects. It’ll be interesting to see what sorts of projects survive and which ones fail over the coming years of kickstarter.

Both this and Tim’s are fairly “safe” bets in that they’re from proven, professional industry veterans, not some guys in their bedrooms. In particular, Tim also has a development company that has already put out a high-quality game (Psychonauts) to prove that he and those around him are still capable.

That, I’d say, is a massive part of why they’re getting such responses, vs. unproven indies with ideas that, frankly, aren’t even that desperately compelling, or are hard to see how they could pan out.

Tactical shooters are just overdone imo, it’s nothing new, innovative, or creative. People want to remake some of those old games that they remember growing up with, much like with what Doublefine wants to do with an old school adventure game.

I looked at that project and had no idea what kind of game play they were going for. As Hoaxfish says, “Tactical” and “Shooter” have so many meanings in the mainstream that they could be planning to go in any direction.

Even, then, if it’s a first person shooter, that design space is pretty well explored. Adding the tactical elements of SWAT 3-4 or Rainbow Six is not enough to make it a compelling project to me.

I agree, with most points – not having anything to show (even a title!), nor doing any “warmup” for the Kickstarter the way Fargo has were very poor choices.

The very fact that people are saying “There’s loads of tactical shooters!” means he did not communicate the type of game he wants to make well at all; listening to him in interviews he most certainly does want to make an original Rainbow 6 style game with planning modes etc. If people cannot tell the difference between CoD and the old Rainbow 6 games then lets just stop the games industry now.

Mainly I feel sorry for him because once you arse up that first chance you won’t get another soon.

Sorry but that’s rubbish. Play it for an hour or two and you’ll be perfectly comfortable with the interface. It’s the same for all old games. Even I often go back and play old games that I somehow missed out on and can get used to their interfaces within a couple of hours.

Wasteland isn’t Dwarf Fortress. It’s perfectly functional and easy to get used to, especially as the game is turn-based. It’s like the Ultima V, or The Bard’s Tale, or Pool of Radiance. They just take a little time to get used to.

I wish him luck. I’m not really interested in the game though. It’s interesting though that this is how other developers are following Doublefine in getting a game made. I love that we, the customer or fan of the game can have a say or be a part of the experience.

Find out what works.
Repeat what works
Repeat it again.
When it suddenly doesn’t work blame the developer, close them, and repeat again.
When it doesn’t work again find something new that worked despite you telling the developers it will never work in a million years because it isn’t whatever you have been repeating.
Repeat that.
Repeat.

At times like this, I wish I was rich. I would unhesitatingly drop a grand to be an in-game NPC if I had that kind of money to spare. I would also write out a big honking dialog tree for them to consider using; because that’s my idea of a good time.

My prediction: I think they’re going to make their target. Currently running at $25,000 an hour, over the first day I think that rate can be reasonably sustained as people find out about it for the first time and different gaming news sites pick up on it. They’ll then be at $500,000+ for this first day and can at least coast the rest of the way, especially if further updates are added during the Kickstarter phase to gain attention again and people will want to push it through to the target anyway if they see that it is close.

It is still a shame that rps didn´t support that tactical shooter to the same amount like they did here. RPS and other media have gainsed some influence on the video game developing market. Of course the fault might lie with Christian Allen himself, as he didn´t go out and went to the media himself. Stil it sucks. I hope some of you will support: link to kickstarter.com

Very much agree with you. I wish this project would be succesfully done, but it looks like Allen just do it in a rush without enough hype built beforehand. I even just knew about it after its run for 3 days from PA report Interview. Man, there’s still 19 days to go.

I seriously hope it gets funded. The shaky ground it seems to be on now is a pity, since I don’t know that it’s particularly a reflection of the demand for a true hardcore tactical shooter, but more of the presentation, and the way (in a sense) that it’s marketed to us. I want to see developers making games they are passionate about, and Christian Allen certainly qualifies. It’s just not pitched as well as it could be to us, it’s investors, and so it’s harder to say, “Everyone! Look here! Make this happen!”…

To the people with the personal tastes to fund a Wasteland game an FPS is an FPS.

Another thing is that the Tactical Shooter kickstarter is an abuse of the model. You aren’t paying for a product, you are paying for a bullet point on a Powerpoint slide. When that fails your money goes to his consolation hookers and cocaine fund. Fuck that.

I think the idea didn’t stand out enough (give it a name at least) / wasn’t realized far enough to make an effective pitch, the creator wasn’t nearly as famous, and the fans of tactical shooters aren’t as loud or present on the internet. 200k also seems like a tiny amount of money for a shooter.

Which is kind of problematic, because if it gets funded by kickstarter but publishers are still not convinced, devs are pretty much f*cked. They would have to deliver promised shooter with 200000 bucks, and that’s just impossible:).

It’s also possible there’s simply less people that want that sort of game than want a proper Wasteland sequel from many of the original people involved with Wasteland or a new point & click adventure game from Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert. I know that even though I conceivably might poke at a Rainbow Six-esque tactical shooter, I’m not going to be good at it and I probably won’t get much out of it. (I do adore the ARMA franchise, but I already feel adequately served there.) Meanwhile turn-based RPG with tactical combat, and LucasArts-glory-days type point and click adventure game are two of my favorite genres even if they weren’t respectively associated with one of the greatest cRPGs of all time and Tim Schafer.

Based on past record, if it were PayPal, tomorrow RPS would be running a headline about how Double Fine made $4 million but won’t see a penny of it for three years and then maybe it’ll all just vanish into refunds and the ether anyway.

That’s a shame. You really should at least give one of the Fallouts a try. Or a Baldur’s Gate if MED-IEVAL TIIIIIIIIMESSS is more your style. I honestly prefer the Fallouts though and that’s even with me loving High Fantasy to bits.

Can you really call Baldur’s Gate/Baldur’s Gate 2 “turn based”? I know they are based on AD&D which is turn based, but the games themselves implement those as continuous (i.e. adjoining) 6-second rounds. If you don’t pause they run together and look like a real-time game.

Baldur’s Gate isn’t really turn-based. You can speed stuff up a lot, and the enemy acts simultaneously. While I like turn-based games, I haven’t ever completed on either because at a certain point it becomes too drawn-out…

After watching the DoubleFine video and the Wasteland 2 video in somewhat quick succession, it’s clear that Schafer is more comfortable in front of a camera, is funnier, and is more confident. That said, Fargo still did a fine job. He’s just following one of the most charismatic people in the business. I feel like there’s an alternate reality out there where Tim Schafer is a successful comedian.

Still, awesome stuff. I just can’t decide between the 50 and 100 dollar tiers.

No they don’t. Did they take people to court for playing the Ultima series before they stuck it up on GOG? No they didn’t. EA care about money and if they aren’t selling a 24 year old product then you can bet they consider it worthless.

They haven’t sued anyone, as far as I know, but they were quite aggressive about cease and desist letters and similar tactics. It was really frustrating because they own a lot of great IPs that they were doing absolutely nothing to actually make available until they finally signed up with GoG, but they would force their games off abandonware sites.

All you would need to do is go to one of the core abandonware sites like Home of the Underdogs circa 2005-2006 or so. Unfortunately, Home of the Underdogs no longer exists – there are a couple of sites that have attempted to recreate it, but they don’t appear to have the same policies – and many of the EA games that used to be just marked as a no go because of takedown notices are now purchaseable legitimately through GoG, so sites like Abandonia provide purchase links instead.

Make no mistake, I’m not talking about EA actively pursuing individual pirates of their old games. That’s something that companies almost never do even with modern games that they still sell. But even if a game is old and not for sale, it’s still piracy absent the approval of the license holder, and if you have a moral objection to that sort of thing, EA’s stance has been pretty clear: don’t do it.

@Llewyn: That was regarding Ultima IV being considered freeware. Nothing to do with EA hunting down people playing their old games. So in other words this has nothing to do with people obtaining a digital copy of Wasteland to play it themselves.

I never said that EA hunted down people who downloaded their old games. I said that EA has a history of issuing cease and desist letters to sites distributing their old games. Almost no other companies have bothered to go that far.

Bad UI? Not particularly. Wasteland had a built in macro system for you to bind your own commands. Respawning enemies? That’s not a particularly bad thing, though in some locations the respawn rate is too high. Also, the fights themselves were better than Fallout’s. Watching 20 weak enemies slowly crawl towards you was properly boring.

My fingers are crossed they reach the amount required. I do have my doubts though.

As for the tactical shooter I believe Black Foot studios shooter is getting a new lease of life in it’s development. Well so hints the developer after his trip to GDC. News is supposed to be forth coming today.

I still don’t trust InXile to make a good RPG, and Brian was the guy who said ‘all RPGs really wanted to be action games’, after all. (Allegedly.) Still, I am pledging to this because support for old-school RPGs is a thing that needs to happen, and I’ll even support Garriot if he shows up. DO YOU HEAR THAT, OLD SCHOOL RPG DEVS. YOU WANT MY MONEY, CORRECT.

/crosses fingers and hopes Mr. Fargo still has it in him. He did give a very good interview.

(No, seriously, THANK YOU for that correction. You have no idea how shocked I got after hearing that. It was one of the saddest things to hear. And now it is happily corrected and resolved, which is rather wonderful.)

There’s too much happiness and joy in this thread, so I’m going to flood you with negativity, woo.

The problem here is that this entire Kickstarter is being sold on nostalgia, isn’t it? Schafer and Double Fine at least have been making games like what they are funding, so the funders have a reasonable expectation that they are paying for at least something interesting. But Brian Fargo hasn’t made anything remotely like Wasteland for decades. Look at the recent library of inXile, and what do you see? A few action adventures and a bunch of iOS object stacking games. Brian Fargo may profess a commitment to old style turn based tactical RPGs, but there’s no evidence of that in his works. Even his lead game designer apparently hasn’t made a game since 1993!

Why do we think they still have got it? If they brought in someone like Jeff Vogel with recent experience in turn based RPGs, then that might be something. Then we’d know that they know how to make a fun game. If they made a demo or something to showcase their ideas and talent, then that too would be something. But right now, all we have is promises and words (I’m also rather uncomfortable with the cynical use of ‘it’s not going to be a FPS here’) and having done something great twenty years ago. Well, people change in twenty years, and just being in the right genre and having the right IP doesn’t mean Wasteland 2 is going to be a good game.

Lets look at the worst case here. Say they “don’t got it anymore.” Say they just get lazy or use outdated design precepts or whatever.

From what I see, if that happens we’re getting another Fallout, just probably less polished. I’d be okay with that for $15. And why shouldn’t he cynically use those words? He remembers what BethSoft did to his company’s IP. I’d be cynical and a tad bitter about it too. Especially since, well, none of us WANT him to make an FPS.

It’s rather supremely cynical when his company also remade Bard’s Tale as a console third person hack and slash game back in 2004, when those (and not FPS games) were popular, and before this Kickstarter his company hasn’t attempted to make anything like the original Wasteland.

The fact that people working on the game have been out of the industry for two decades is a good sign, because very little good has come out of the last two decades. Perhaps they will “accidentally” do something “outdated” and we’ll end up with a good cRPG again.

Remember that both Ken St. Andre and Michael Stackpole, two of the original Wasteland designers, are both involved in Wasteland 2. These two people have a pen and paper RPG background. Ken St. Andrew created Tunnels & Trolls back in 1975, the second RPG after D&D. Michael Stackpole created Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes, the system that influenced Wasteland’s character system.

That’s a seriously corrosive attitude that ignores the many contributions and innovations made to videogames since 1988. Very little good, seriously? Are we ignoring Planescape, Baldur’s Gate, half the Ultima series, Jagged Alliance, Xcom….. all of those?

And on the practical level, do they know how long it takes to make an ambitious open world tactical turn based RPG with today’s technology? 12 months sounds recklessly ambitious.

Fallout took 3 and a half years to make. Fallout 2 took a year, and that’s with an established team, reusing the engine and much of the art assets. These guys think they can make a game like that from scratch with a team unused to working together or even on games at all, in 12 months. What happens if they hit the deadline and barely anything is finished?

Jagged Alliance 2 and X-COM were fine games, but X-COM wasn’t an RPG while Jagged Alliance 2 was a hybrid of a genre that necessitates good combat (the thing that declined the most in RPGs).

Baldur’s Gate? What did that do other than introduce real-time with pause and destroy turn-based combat? Half the Ultima series? You mean Serpent Isle, 8 and 9? Don’t get me started on Planescape “story over gameplay” Torment.

Not to mention that you’re channeling some serious hypocrisy with all these charges of “cynicism” when your viewpoint seems to come down to “they can’t possibly do this. They have no idea what they’re doing because they’re old and unestablished.”

I do get what you’re saying about ambition and such, but you know that they’re actually planning an 18 month development cycle right? You’re talking about world-building and planning, which is all the stuff they’re planning to do over the next six months, with a release coming a year after THAT. Not to mention that Jason Anderson has (apparently) already put a year of work into the planning and background of the game and its world. And if they hit the deadline and it isn’t finished, they move the deadline back until the money runs out. One of the beauties of not having a publisher.

I’m all for caution and devil’s advocate, you seem to be going a bit beyond that.

I rather like Spiderweb games, but IDK, I don’t really think Jeff Vogel would be a good man for the job. The atmosphere of his games don’t really work with ones like Wasteland, and he does tend to have the same quirks in everything he makes.

And at least we know what we’re getting and we can actually make demands and BE the Meddling Executives that always Ruined Our Games By Catering To The Unwashed Masses. We’re the ones doing the QA, remember?

(Note : I also think InXile’s previous offers are kind of dodgy. I pledged anyway. There are many reasons people choose to part with their money.)

That’s why you have funding tiers, isn’t it? To choose the amount you’re comfortable with giving based on the risk that you might be disappointed with the final outcome?

Besides, the backers do have pull. Can you imagine what will happen to the Metacritic scores and sales of the game if the backers sufficiently hated it? Of course nobody will be okay with ALL the features, we’re never okay with everything in a game, but if Fargo decided to make an FP manshoot instead, it’ll burn in hell instead of having to deal with some disgruntled grumbling. And so will his reputation and that of his company.

You may say that it’s not substantial enough, fame vs. money invested, but I’m working in an IP-based industry and I’d say that brand name really is everything. So we’re carrying risks. So are they.

I think I’d just be much more comfortable if the kickstarter came at a later stage in the development process, or if we had a progressive kickstart where for example we might have repeated funding drives as the project goes past certain checkpoints. That would be a more reasonable QA process than possible backlash way off in the future, and it would build allowances for, e.g. development taking more time/money than they had thought, or the audience having, it turns out, differing expectations of what they want.

You seem to be talking about crowd-development, which is most certainly NOT what they have any interest in doing. Nor should they, since no large game could be made that way in any reasonable period of time. They’re assuring us that we’ll have input, but you’re asking for outright control (or darn close to it), and then they might as well just break down and accede to the demands of a publisher.

Not to mention that Jason Anderson has already put in a year of work on the world and developer documents. I mean, its not like Fargo sat down and said “give us a million bucks and we’ll conceive of a game and get to work on it toot sweet!”